What is PHP?

Most pages on our web site, including the page you're reading now, are generated
using PHP.

PHP and HTML

How can you tell?

Web pages usually have an extension at the end of their name. In most
cases, HTML pages
have ".html" or ".htm" as their extension.

In contrast, PHP-generated web pages usually have ".php" as their extension.

What else is PHP used for?

Repetition is one reason, but a more important reason is that
PHP can perform logical operations, calculations,
databaseOpens in a new window operations, web connections, and so on.

PHP is a full programming language, allowing web designers
to create powerful, feature-rich and complex web sites more easily.

Web pages that use PHP are still normal web pages whose content is
described in
HTML.
In fact, your browser works exactly the same whether you're viewing
a page written HTML or in PHP. This is because the output of
PHP code is HTML code.

It's important to note that PHP is used to generate
HTML pages. Your browser
behaves exactly the same whether a web page has ".html" or ".php"

So why is PHP used?

Web sites have a lot of repetition. For example, the header and footer
on every page of a web site is usually the same. Also, navigation menus
are generally identical on every page.

Actually repeating the HTML code on every page creates a maintenance problem.
Imagine if you wanted to update the copyright message on a web site that
had 100 pages. Would you want to visit each page and make 100
identical changes?

Computers are very good at doing repetitive tasks. So, for complex
web sites, many web designers choose to use a scripting language
such as PHP to reduce the repetition.

In the copyright message example, a PHP page can simply include the
copyright message from a single file stored on the server. The web site
owner then just needs to make the one change in that single file in order
to change the copyright message you see on every page of his web site.

PHP and Forms Processing

When a web form
is submitted to a
server
processing must be performed to do something with the data submitted.

This processing requires decisions (logic), computations (calculations),
and various other operations. For this reason, a programming language
must be used to accept a form submission.

PHP is very good choice for writing a forms processor because it has
been designed from the beginning as a computer language to be used on the
web.

Do I need to learn PHP?

The short answer is "no". PHP is a full programming language
and is really only designed for use by qualified programmers.

The web is full of example PHP scripts that you can copy and paste, and
this can make it seem very simple to use. In many cases, copying and
pasting PHP code is fine if you have a good understanding of what you're doing.

However, computer programming is a very complex task and this means
it's easy to get things wrong or create security problems.

You'll be aware of all the security problems for which large software companies
are continually providing "patches" or updates. These companies
can afford to hire the best programmers with years of experience
(though, for some strange reason they don't
seem to hire the best or most experienced!) and these programmers
still fail to create secure and reliable software.

So, programming is best left to the true professionals, and you're best to
find the ones with a proven track record of creating secure and reliable
software.

What should I do?

Is it really that hard?

Note that tens of thousands of web site owners (who are not programmers
or PHP experts) have downloaded and configured Tectite FormMail since 2003.

By carefully following the instructions and looking at the examples,
almost anyone can configure a pre-written PHP script such
as Tectite FormMail.

However, as a web site owner, we do recommend that you become
familiar with reading PHP code.

Like most programming languages, PHP is quite easy to understand with some
basic training. (Note that understanding code is 1000 times easier than writing
code.)

You'll often need to make minor changes to PHP scripts you use. If you download
and configure our FormMail product,
you'll be making manual changes to its
configuration section.

You can do this easily with any text editor, but you will need to have some
basic understanding of reading a computer language such as PHP.

If you don't want to even look at PHP code, then the best solution is to use
our Configuration Wizard.
For basic operation, it provides you with
working PHP code (and HTML forms) without you having to even look at the
PHP code.

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